Paul Cocksedge Studio

I thought this morning I’d share a couple of projects from London based designer Paul Cocksedge. I love his studio’s playfulness and ingenuity. Pushing the bounds of what is possible materially but with people at the heart of what they produce.

Paul is a Londoner who finds his inspiration from the city itself. The ‘Please Take a Seat’ installation, part of the 2019 London Design Festival, was something rather special. Made from re-claimed scaffolding planks of wood, the curvy structure resembles pencil shavings from above. It is lovely seeing how the public have taken to this ‘seat’, public art that’s practical and a joy to use.

I spotted recently on Design Boom a bridge the designer will be building in South Africa. The ‘Exploded View Bridge’ is simple, using strengthened eucalyptus wood, finding a use for a tree which is actually not native to South Africa and can be quite invasive, impacting the water table negatively.

The shards of wood not only look beautiful but provide steps and seats along the way. It’s that consideration of how people will interact with his projects that I like.

Something quite different, Crystallize is a project Cocksedge created for the Milan Design Fair back in 2005 for Swarovski. Here he produced a chandelier with a single crystal at the centre, brought to life by  lasers. The installation disappears when there is no light, the light reveals the iconic shape of the Swarovski crystal.

Another example of pushing the boundaries of material, in 2015 the studio created the Freeze bench:

“In Freeze, Cocksedge exploits freezing temperatures to create a seamless bond between metals that otherwise do not adhere in nature. The breakthrough in the series – a table of copper and aluminum – was made by first burying four copper legs in snow, leaving them to contract by 100th of a millimeter; second, excavating the legs and inserting them into holes cut into an aluminum slab where they were allowed to un-freeze back to ambient temperature thereby firmly locking into place in a strong, invisible join”.

Beautiful in appearance and in execution.